Amygdala, described by Hyperallergic as the reigning diva of the L train, has moved her Brooklyn drag world across the East River. Her variety show Pleasure Dome: Continuum opened its first iteration on October 7 at SoMad, a multimedia art space on the fourth floor at 34 East 23rd Street near Madison Square Park, with the run continuing October 8 and a second part scheduled for November 18 and 19. Each iteration features a changing lineup. Editor-at-large Hrag Vartanian, reviewing the show for Hyperallergic on October 8, frames the evening as something closer to necessity than entertainment: queer art under pressure from a right-wing resurgence, staged as a ritual of possibility. The narrow room distributed performances around the audience so there were no bad seats. Amygdala served as guide through the evening in song and readings, including notes jotted on a phone while stuck on a Brooklyn subway, ruminating on ancestors and the drive to exist, survive, and share knowledge. The supporting cast pushed at the edges of the form. Selena Surreal worked Modern Primitivism into a piercing performance, removing her piercings to gorgeous streaks of blood during a set to Radiohead's Exit Music (For a Film). RuAfza brought Brechtian bite to critiques of billionaires and right-wing hysteria, at one point refusing to perform while projections danced behind her and large white letters declared she no longer wanted to work, capped by a Luigi Mangione-inspired enactment. Final girl '98 played the jester, sprawling across the stage and into the crowd while the words Art World Grifters were projected on a curtain. Julie J supplied commanding elegance in an orange lame cloudscape, performing As If We Never Said Goodbye to a roused room. The review closes on the show's wager: that queer performance can function as a kind of mass for a city constantly remaking itself, proof that politics, like art, is about what people aspire to be.